Steve Jobs: a personal remembrance

John Siracusa remembers how Steve Jobs shaped his view of the world.

When I was a kid, I had a picture of the original Macintosh team on my bedroom wall. It showed a hundred or so Apple employees standing in front of an office building. Some people on the left were holding a cloth banner with the "Picasso" Macintosh logo on it. A man sitting on the ground on the right cradled a baby. Front and center, crouching with an original Macintosh computer perched on his knee was Steve Jobs, wearing jeans, a long-sleeve black shirt, and gray sneakers.

I was 9 years old at the time. That year, my grandfather had changed my life by purchasing a Macintosh 128K, and convincing my parents to do the same. My grandfather also had a subscription to Macworld magazine, including multiple copies of issue #1, two of which I took home with me. I cut the Macintosh team picture out of one and left the other intact. (I still have both.)

I pored over that magazine for years, long after the technical and product information it contained was useless. It was the Macintosh team that fascinated me. That's why I'd chosen to cut out this particular picture, not a photo of the hardware or software. After seeing the Macintosh and then reading this issue of Macworld, I had an important realization in my young life: people made this.

The Macintosh was the first thing in my life that I recognized as being wholly new. Everything I'd seen thus far in my nine years had seemed like it already existed prior to my birth—perhaps like it had always existed. But here was something different, something amazing, and this magazine explained how it had been created by this small group of people.

The implications bloomed in my mind. We aren't stuck with the things we have now. We can make new things, better things. And it doesn't take many people to do it. The team that had created this mind-bending new machine were all up on my wall, their individual faces clearly recognizable.

And who was the unifying force behind this small band of engineers and artists? Why, the young, boyishly handsome Steve Jobs, of course. Already lionized as a entrepreneurial whiz kid thanks to the blockbuster success of Apple Computer, Inc., Steve was now cast in the role of technological visionary, leading a rebel team of misfits on a mission to create something insanely great. And he did it; the proof was sitting in my hot little 9-year-old hands. People made this.

Fast-forward to 1997. My favorite company was on the ropes, financially, technologically, and emotionally. I was 22 years old, and my finely honed cynicism had put a damper on the romantic notion that a small team of smart people could put a dent in the universe—even one led by Steve Jobs, who had been pushed out of Apple just a year after the Macintosh was introduced.

By this point in my life, I'd also had enough experience with government, corporations, and academic bureaucracies to understand what happens to organizations as they get larger. The middle-managers and empire-builders start to take root. Each problem results in a new guideline or process meant to prevent the problem from ever occurring again. Metrics are added, because managers can't manage what they can't measure. Individual incentives shift so far from the stated corporate goal that they actively work against it. Intrinsic motivation wanes. The ability to do truly great work all but disappears.

As it turns out, Steve had another lesson to teach me. He returned to Apple and, well, you all know the rest of the story: iMac, iPod, iTunes, Mac OS X, iLife, iPhone, iOS, iPad. Boom.

My childhood revelation about humanity's potential to alter its reality had a particular technological focus, but was an otherwise unremarkable intellectual coming of age. But this second and, sadly, final chapter in the life of Steve Jobs rewrote the rule book for the innocent and cynics alike.

In a post-Steve-Jobs world, there is no longer an excuse for large corporations to be less bold than start-ups. Elegance, character, artistic integrity, and ruthless dedication to design can no longer be derided as luxuries of those who don't have anything to lose. Apple is now one of the largest, most successful companies in the world, but it still behaves as if all of its employees could fit in a 9x7-inch photo.

In an article in the premiere issue of Macworld, members of the Macintosh team were each given a few paragraphs to talk about the project. The very last entry is from Steve Jobs, who characteristically starts by deflecting credit. "The people who are doing the work are the motivating force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay."

He ends nostalgically, a wizened veteran of the tech industry at the ripe old age of 29, contemplating the future of the Macintosh team. "The group might stay together maybe for one more iteration of the product, and then they'll go their separate ways. For a very special moment, all of us have come together to make this new product. We feel this may be the best thing we'll ever do with our lives."

For Jobs himself, at least, it wasn't. Thank you, Steve, for everything.

168 Reader Comments

Everyone needs something that they can truly care about and be passionate about. Everything you wrote here is made clear in how much time you devote to your OS X reviews. A thank you to you too for those.

My impression about Steve Jobs was that his adoption story made him who he was and gave him his incredible drive to be the best at what he did, directly leading to Apple's success. As an adopted child, without knowledge of his biological parents, he was unafraid to break boundaries because he was never told what he could or couldn't do. He was a temperamental, one of a kind, my-way-or-die personality.

I can't wait until the lionizing is over. Famous rich people shouldn't be fawned over. I don't care if you're Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Princess Diana, or Steve Jobs. He was just a man who got very rich and very famous and had a cult of personality around him. The world may be a little worse off without him...but only a very little.

What a thoughtful and moving tribute, John. I've been using Apple's computers since the ripe old age of 5 or 6 or so, when I was in kindergarden and we played games and even did Logo. For most of the rest of my years, Apple's products have been thoroughly embedded in my life both personally and professionally. My very career has been based largely around Apple for about a decade now. It is impossible to overstate how much of an impact Jobs has made on me, both through his products, and his spirit, which will endure and continue to inspire countless people for many, many years. He was one of the Greats. Let's hope that what he said is true, and that death is life's best invention, clearing the way for something even newer and better to come along. If his passing means we are in store for something better, well... It's hard to feel quite as worried about the future.

I can't wait until the lionizing is over. Famous rich people shouldn't be fawned over. I don't care if you're Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Princess Diana, or Steve Jobs. He was just a man who got very rich and very famous and had a cult of personality around him. The world may be a little worse off without him...but only a very little.

I can't wait until the lionizing is over. Famous rich people shouldn't be fawned over. I don't care if you're Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Princess Diana, or Steve Jobs. He was just a man who got very rich and very famous and had a cult of personality around him. The world may be a little worse off without him...but only a very little.

I can't wait until the lionizing is over. Famous rich people shouldn't be fawned over. I don't care if you're Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Princess Diana, or Steve Jobs. He was just a man who got very rich and very famous and had a cult of personality around him. The world may be a little worse off without him...but only a very little.

Excepting all the things he accomplished that made him rich and famous.

It's not like he was born so, he actually went out and earned it. He made Apple, he made NeXT, he made the Mac and then Mac OS X and then the iPhone and iOS and directly influenced everything that came ever after.

Of course some one else would have, eventually, done so. Yes, of course he didn't do everything, that's what teams and engineers and qa do. But he facilitated, he convinced, he connived, he moved mountains and molehills. You can eat your sour grapes because the fact that you somehow posted to an internet forum like Ars is due in no small part to the work Jobs (and Apple and NeXT and everyone else influenced by them) spent his life on.

I can't wait until the lionizing is over. Famous rich people shouldn't be fawned over. I don't care if you're Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Princess Diana, or Steve Jobs. He was just a man who got very rich and very famous and had a cult of personality around him. The world may be a little worse off without him...but only a very little.

Please take your rabid anti-social Aspergers back to 4chan -- thanks!

Nothing anti-social about it. I volunteer my time at hospice. I watch people die all too often. Perhaps it makes me a bit jaded, but I just can't get up tears and cries for sainthood for folks who get so many words of wonder dedicated to them because they made shiny things other people liked to buy...and I say that as a hardcore nerd. People will say Jobs changed the world, but all he changed was consumerism. I can't mourn folks who have millions of people who don't know the person but own an iPhone saying crap like "this is the saddest day of my life" on their facebook pages. #firstworldproblems

This has nothing to do with him or his family by the way. I feel for them. Losing loved ones always hurts. I just have no room in my heart for articles like these, regardless of their disembodied (famous) subject. I gave the examples of MJ and Princess Di for a reason.

It's not like he was born so, he actually went out and earned it. He made Apple, he made NeXT, he made the Mac and then Mac OS X and then the iPhone and iOS and directly influenced everything that came ever after.

Nothing anti-social about it. I volunteer my time at hospice. I watch people die all too often. Perhaps it makes me a bit jaded, but I just can't get up tears and cries for sainthood for folks who get so many words of wonder dedicated to them because they made shiny things other people liked to buy...and I say that as a hardcore nerd.

No one is asking you to cry, but you seriously sound like a stuck up jerk when you group Jobs alongside pop stars and princesses.

Quote:

People will say Jobs changed the world, but all he changed was consumerism. I can't mourn folks who have millions of people who don't know the person but own an iPhone saying crap like "this is the saddest day of my life" on their facebook pages. #firstworldproblems

You think the Apple I, the Mac, laser printers, multitouch, video streaming, interactive video, handheld computers, and networking is somehow only consumerism? That all he touched and affected was how things were marketed and sold?

I can't wait until the lionizing is over. Famous rich people shouldn't be fawned over. I don't care if you're Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Princess Diana, or Steve Jobs. He was just a man who got very rich and very famous and had a cult of personality around him. The world may be a little worse off without him...but only a very little.

Finally someone with a sense of perspective. Jobs helped produce expensive consumer gadgets, he didn't cure cancer (guess that would have been more useful to him if he had though).

Nothing anti-social about it. I volunteer my time at hospice. I watch people die all too often. Perhaps it makes me a bit jaded, but I just can't get up tears and cries for sainthood for folks who get so many words of wonder dedicated to them because they made shiny things other people liked to buy...and I say that as a hardcore nerd.

No one is asking you to cry, but you seriously sound like a stuck up jerk when you group Jobs alongside pop stars and princesses.

Quote:

People will say Jobs changed the world, but all he changed was consumerism. I can't mourn folks who have millions of people who don't know the person but own an iPhone saying crap like "this is the saddest day of my life" on their facebook pages. #firstworldproblems

You think the Apple I, the Mac, laser printers, multitouch, video streaming, interactive video, handheld computers, and networking is somehow only consumerism? That all he touched and affected was how things were marketed and sold?

Not exactly. Technology itself has done a lot of tremendous good in the world. But it would have happened anyway. Most of those things already existed and people were working on them. They weren't invented out of pure imagination. Jobs and Apple just did the best job at making them affordable and appealing to consumers. (and I am NOT saying that is a bad or frivolous thing!)

I don't think consumerism is bad. I just don't think it is good, either. It just is. My problem is more the scope of "emotion" expressed whenever someone famous dies. I usually avoid it in the tech world, but now our #1 celebrity has died, so we have to go through those motions here. I don't enjoy it really, if you hadn't noticed.

I'm a bit older than you, John, though (thankfully?) not as old as your inspirational grandfather, or even the more inspirational Steve. But he's been a hero of mine, too, especially since the NeXT days. Not everyone in our craft who <i>knows</i> they're right gets the opportunity to not only prove it, but count croup over the mismanagers who pushed them out in the first place. He's also (formerly) living proof that greatness doesn't magically disappear, Cinderella's-carriage style, just because you've reached a certain age. That's a lesson that much of the world, and our industry, has yet to figure out.

Steve dying is also a reminder to all of us: Live. Here. Now. Nobody can change the past; no human knows the future perfectly; this is all we have, and if we waste now, give now less than our complete best, then at best we'll look back and say 'if only…'. That's not a very fun way to live.

I don't comment often on ARS but I have to say that this was an excellent article JS. Like many others here, I grew up learning how to use an Apple IIe in elementary school, then an iPod, iPod touch, Macbook Pro, and an ipad. All of these devices have really contributed to who I am today and helped me in some form along the way.

I once found an article that compares apple products to Jimi Hendrix's studio Electric Ladyland in that the two are both inspiring in an intangible way that people either understand or they do not. It is through that design ethos that Stevie J pushed apple into a different ring, apart from the other manufacturers and into some intangible realm of art.

Really well written, and reminds me a lot of my own childhood. My wife was surprised by how hurt I was when I first heard the news. She knows I grew up with computers, but I don't think she realizes the impact they had on my life. I am in the computer industry today because of my experiences when I was a child. My first experience being with that of the Apple II, and not to much later the Macintosh 512K. I would get incredibly excited anytime I got use see a different model Macintosh.

I still have a pile of my old Mac's sitting here in my room (IIci, LC475, Performa 6200CD, and a PowerBook 140 to name the ones visible)

Yeah, people may call me an Apple fan boy for it (although I don't compare myself to the newer gen iDevice followers). But so be it. Its what I grew up with Apple products and because of that will always be a part of me.

Steve will be missed by many. The average user, his 'cult' followers, his friends, but most importantly, his Family.

I can't wait until the lionizing is over. Famous rich people shouldn't be fawned over. I don't care if you're Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Princess Diana, or Steve Jobs. He was just a man who got very rich and very famous and had a cult of personality around him. The world may be a little worse off without him...but only a very little.

Please take your rabid anti-social Aspergers back to 4chan -- thanks!

Nothing anti-social about it. I volunteer my time at hospice. I watch people die all too often. Perhaps it makes me a bit jaded, but I just can't get up tears and cries for sainthood for folks who get so many words of wonder dedicated to them because they made shiny things other people liked to buy...and I say that as a hardcore nerd. People will say Jobs changed the world, but all he changed was consumerism. I can't mourn folks who have millions of people who don't know the person but own an iPhone saying crap like "this is the saddest day of my life" on their facebook pages. #firstworldproblems

This has nothing to do with him or his family by the way. I feel for them. Losing loved ones always hurts. I just have no room in my heart for articles like these, regardless of their disembodied (famous) subject. I gave the examples of MJ and Princess Di for a reason.

I feel bad for folks who have to spend their last days with the likes of you.

Just because Lemurs has a different opinion than you or others here, it doesn't make him a troll. He is dead on about the hysteria of people mourning someone they never even knew. This does not take away from any of Jobs great achievements, they are mutually exclusive.

It's unfortunate people get labelled trolls for pointing out the obvious rather than getting caught up in the hysteria that happens every single time someone remotely renowned dies.

You're being called a troll for being stupid, ignorant, and wrong, which probably isn't fair.

It's not obvious at all that Jobs was merely a salesman. In fact, given his life long track record, it sounds like he was a lot more than a salesman; he was a visionary. You disagree, I think, because you don't share his vision, but you cannot argue that his vision didn't in fact come true.

You cannot say you don't use any of those because clearly you're typing, on the internet, right now! Yes, I already said that if he hadn't done it then someone else would have, eventually, but the point is that in fact he had, and did, bring a lot of these technologies to market (which again does make him a successful businessman) even of other people improved on his work later.

You think I'm trolling because I lament an expression of our peculiar cultural phenomenon of praising the famous dead? Honestly? I'm not calling Jobs names. I actually think John's piece is tastefully done. I read it, because it would be disrespectful not to and then comment on a topic like this. I shouldn't have to want to praise the man in a forum like this to be allowed to speak though. He's getting his priase the world over right now. He should rest in peace and I am glad he is no longer suffering. I hope his loved ones remember him as fondly as the rest of the world seems to.

You think I'm trolling because I lament an expression of our peculiar cultural phenomenon of praising the famous dead? Honestly? I'm not calling Jobs names. I actually think John's piece is tastefully done. I read it, because it would be disrespectful not to and then comment on a topic like this. I shouldn't have to want to praise the man in a forum like this to be allowed to speak though. He's getting his priase the world over right now. He should rest in peace and I am glad he is no longer suffering. I hope his loved ones remember him as fondly as the rest of the world seems to.

That was beautiful. Maybe that should have been your first post in this thread

It's unfortunate people get labelled trolls for pointing out the obvious rather than getting caught up in the hysteria that happens every single time someone remotely renowned dies.

You're being called a troll for being stupid, ignorant, and wrong, which probably isn't fair.

It's not obvious at all that Jobs was merely a salesman. In fact, given his life long track record, it sounds like he was a lot more than a salesman; he was a visionary. You disagree, I think, because you don't share his vision, but you cannot argue that his vision didn't in fact come true.

You cannot say you don't use any of those because clearly you're typing, on the internet, right now! Yes, I already said that if he hadn't done it then someone else would have, eventually, but the point is that in fact he had, and did, bring a lot of these technologies to market (which again does make him a successful businessman) even of other people improved on his work later.

We all rest on the shoulders of giants.

So because I use a computer and the Internet (both of which had little to do with Jobs, but alright) I can't point out the ludicrousness and hypocrisy of the mass hysteria that's followed his death from people that didn't know him?

Just because Lemurs has a different opinion than you or others here, it doesn't make him a troll. He is dead on about the hysteria of people mourning someone they never even knew. This does not take away from any of Jobs great achievements, they are mutually exclusive.

However, Jobs is one that actually had a very direct role in shaping many aspects of our technological lives, and for many of us, they are the aspects of 21st century life that we enjoy the most. You can say "these things would have happened anyway" which may or may not be true (probably not, at least in the same way, in the same timeframe) but the fact is, Jobs IS the one who pulled it all off, and many of us, with what I think are more normal human feelings of empathy for our fellow man, can and do get moved by the passing of people who influence our lives, even if we don't know them personally.

But really, how can we say we don't know Jobs personally? Of course we all do, as we interact with the products of his meticulous style all day long -- even if you don't use Apple's products, you most assuredly use products that were shaped by Apple at least indirectly.

Go to Wired.com or one of the countless other sites aggregating condolences from pretty much every other tech titan in the world, ALL of whom give Jobs credit for being one of the most definitive, if not outright THE MOST definitive, people in the entire technology world ever. Really, all of these people -- including many of his most fierce critics -- are just wrong?

So because I use a computer and the Internet (both of which had little to do with Jobs, but alright) I can't point out the ludicrousness and hypocrisy of the mass hysteria that's followed his death from people that didn't know him?

You could but that would make you a troll. A better question would be why would you care? I'm sure there are plenty of other speciality forums on the internet that don't care about Steve Jobs. This being a technology forum which covers his company extensively it seems quite appropriate.

John Siracusa / John Siracusa has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University. He has been a Mac user since 1984, a Unix geek since 1993, and is a professional web developer and freelance technology writer.